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Comment by jnwkw | Hacker News Reader

Return the islands? To whom? They are populated by "95.88% British / American" it seems.

Regardless of the moral questions surrounding the resettlement of the people who lived on the islands, I do wonder what the legal implications are of Mauritius accepting the money to begin with. Surely if you sell an Island, you can't later claim that it still belongs to you?

In 1968 the "UK paid the self-governing colony of Mauritius £3m for the islands" which equates to approximately £52m today[1]. At the very least, you would expect that Mauritius would have to pay this back. But, there is also the question of value. The islands, especially given the state of the world today, are probably worth much more than £52m from a strategic point of view.

> Mauritius prime minister Pravind Jugnauth has attempted to smooth things over by saying the country is prepared to reach an agreement with the US and UK to allow the Diego Garcia military base to continue to exist – presumably in return for a fat check each year - arguing that such an approach would "provide a higher degree of legal certainty" than the current situation.

Yes, that /is/ a presumption, but seems quite likely. I still think my above point about ownership stands. If a country sells an island, they surely also sell any claims to sovereignty too. Looking into it further though, it doesn't appear that the islands were sold, but that they were split off from the territory (along with some others too) to form another, the British Indian Ocean Territory. Mauritius was compensated the £3m.

So, I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial ownership, but the implications of this are huge, after all, the US, Canada, Australia, aren't all these countries also former colonies?

[1] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/ using 1965 as start year and 3,000,000 pounds as start value.

> I do wonder what the legal implications are of Mauritius accepting the money to begin with.

Foreign relations go by their own rules; the legal framework they operate under is paper-thin and is constantly being rewritten, often under "might makes right" principles only vaguely masked; but the last century was supposed to mark a shift towards a system of "justice" between nations that works under more humane principles.

For colonization in particular, the validity of this sort of transaction is typically discounted by the self-evident disparity of knowledge and wealth between actors: if I buy gold with seashells while pointing a gun at you, am I really doing something "legal"? If I promise not to do X as part of the buy, then I do it anyway - simply because my guns are bigger than yours - doesn't that void the transaction? If I buy land where people live, then I break their human rights, am I not infringing moral laws that transcend any specific legal framework?

In this particular case, the problems are well-documented.

> I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial ownership, but the implications of this are huge

Only to the untrained eye. Please read up on colonization and decolonization efforts, there is plenty of material. The short story is: if UK and US really believe the principles they have been using as basis of international law since WWI, they should just accept they are wrong in this case, and make amends. Otherwise, we revert to the pre-WWI situation where the world is a jungle and the only thing that matters is the size of any given tiger.

> If a country sells an island, they surely also sell any claims to sovereignty too.

That is a question a judge can answer differently depending on the circumstances of the deal. Was the buyer informed correctly about the consequences? Was the deal made under duress? Was the buyer legally mandated to perform the sale?

The diplomatic cable mentioned in ElReg's article is illustrative of the kind of circumstances the deal was made in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diplomatic_Cable_signed_b...

From what I've read of it the mauritian government didn't really want to sell but the British implied strongly that it would be a pre-requisite for them gaining their independence...

To quote a british official (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Archipelago_sovereignty...)

"in theory, there were a number of possibilities. The Premier and his colleagues could return to Mauritius either with Independence or without it. On the Defence point, Diego Garcia could either be detached by order in Council or with the agreement of the Premier and his colleagues. The best solution of all might be Independence and detachment by agreement, although he could not of course commit the Colonial Secretary at this point. "

Some people have the opinion that colonial acquisitions in general should be relinquished, even if they were legally acquired and there are still treaties permitting them, such as Gibraltar. I think they see who they go back to as a secondary issue and it's the principle that they should be relinquished that is most important.

it is similar to me buying land in any country. the land is still a part of that country

The article provides a clear and detailed explanation of how the traditional inhabitants, who had settled there over a century ago, were forcibly re-settled by the British. The court decision in question calls for them to be returned to the descendants of those people.

I presume you got the quoted statistic from the Chagos Islands info box on that Wikipedia page. If so, I'd urge you to scroll down just a little bit farther to learn the info that the rest of us read in the article. Here's a link to help:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Archipelago#Sovereignty...

My sense is that people mostly just don't want to hear or think about the sometimes messy way that things got to be the way they are (I saw "-2 points" when discussing this a few months ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19626519 ).

This isn't unique to tech startups. I live in Massachusetts and do not regularly think about what exactly happened to the Massachusett people. It was not great.

If they get their island back, why don't the Native Americans get their whole countries back too?

it was also never their island, they lived there as employees only. their ancestors were brought to the uninhabited island by the French

it would be like claiming an oil rig or country estate as your family's property because you've had several generations of drillers/domestic staff employed by the owners

No, it's not like that at all, because an oil rig counts as a vessel, whereas an island is land.

It’s a bit different when the territory is settled by non-indigenous people for a few generations, versus occupied, or just a few structures built and no one really lives there at all.

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